Becoming "Super Tutor"

Blog post written by Barbara Mittman, Iowa Reading Corps AmeriCorps member at Central Elementary.

Barb Mittman, Iowa Reading Corps
AmeriCorps Member

Faster than an uttered phoneme!  More pesky than a mosquito in May!  Able to stop a reader with a single tap!  It’s fidelity, it’s integrity, it’s Super Tutor!

I developed my superhuman abilities to benefit readers and committed to the high moral responsibilities of fidelity and integrity in September.  Like any other superhero, I have tools to help save students from the perils of illiteracy and skills to promote reading fluency.  I also have my own Kryptonite.  When face-to-face with a student’s immediate success, my resolve can weaken.

A second grader misses an “s” on a word in her final newscaster reading.  I buzz in, as annoying as a gnat, with the standard correction.  An ELL student omits a “the.”  I touch the table with my pencil eraser and everything comes to a screeching halt after seven correct sentences.  One “-ed” stands between a third grader and a perfect one-minute repeated reading and I see his shoulders slump as soon as I extend my hand.  In these moments of success, I hate the disruption that the standard correction creates and want to give in to the voice in my head that says, “It’s just an ‘s’ -- just this once.”

My all too human experience has taught me what difference a moment can make and I can be quite disgusted by missed opportunities.  I am totally responsible for the time I have with each Reading Corps student each day.  Since just one letter has the power to change meaning, it is up to me to exercise my super powers time after time.  The only sure outcome of a weakened Super Tutor is a year of “dis” service.

Motivating Students One Gumball Machine at a Time

Blog post written by Loni Jorgenson, Iowa Reading Corps AmeriCorps member at Hoover Elementary.

Loni Jorgenson (right) and
 her Internal Coach, Meredith.

During the Data-Based Decision Making and Great Leaps Intervention Training provided by Minnesota Reading Corps, we discussed a variety of strategies to motivate students. This was especially helpful, because I have several students who are not fans of reading and/or who would prefer not to be pulled from class for Reading Corps tutoring. After returning to my school, I decided to come up with a “game” and behavior reward system to help motivate these students.

To add an element of fun to our tutoring sessions, I created a gumball chart printable that holds 10 stickers. Once the chart is full, the student is rewarded with something simple, such as a bookmark or coloring page. There are several ways students are able to earn stickers for their chart.  A few examples include knowing all of their letter sounds, successfully playing the "tally game" (sitting like a reader and staying focused), leaping pages in the Great Leaps Intervention, finishing readings, and earning a higher progress monitoring score than the previous week.

At the beginning, I had one student who I was not quite sure how to motivate. Frank* loves sports and I was not sure if a gumball chart and coloring pages would motivate him, but I decided to give this strategy a try. I quickly found that the nice thing about using coloring pages is that they are completely customizable. Frank loves the Green Bay Packers, so I suggested that the first coloring page that he would work toward would be a Packers coloring page. He loved it! When his gumball chart was full, he was excited to show his Internal Coach his chart and coloring page that he had earned.

This motivational strategy has been working great for each of my students. My students are no longer hanging their heads when they see me pop in the door to pick them up; they’re all smiles and more than ready to go fill their gumball machines!

*To protect the privacy of our students, this student's name has been changed.